Dr.weiemann’s Visit to Emir Abdullah in Transjordan Cancilled Because Time Suggested Unsuitable: Den

April 1, 1931

Jerusalem (Mar. 30)

The visit which Dr. Weizmann was to have made to Amman, the capital of Transjordan, has been cancelled because the Emir Abdullah is unable to receive him at the time suggested, owing to another appointment, Dr. Weizmann told a gathering of newspaper men held this afternoon at the Keren Hayesod offices denying that the Government had refused to permit him to visit Transjordan or that the Emir Abdulleh had refused to receive him.

The second part of the negotiations with the British Government will commence on April 13th., Dr. Weizmann repeated. The negotiations, the J.T.A. learns, will be conducted with a Committee consisting of the Lord Advocate for Scotland, Mr. Craigie M. Witchison, the Premier’s son, Mr. Malcolm MacDonald, M.P., and one representative each of the Colonial office, the Foreign Office and the Treasury.

Dr. Weizmann declared that he has not had any negotiations with the Arabs, all rumours to this effect being only intelligent anticipation. He went on to dismiss as fantastic the statement made by Shaukat Ali, the Indian Moslem leader, during his stay in Palestine, that he (Dr. Weizmann) had told him that the Jews would penetrate over the whole of Arabia. He had only expressed the hope, he said, that the Jewish influence would radiate over the entire East.

Speaking of the Keren Hayesod, Dr. Weizmann said that the distinction between national and private initiative is artificial. He described the Keren Hayesod as the financial Chaluz, without which business enterprise would have been impossible. Anyone belittling the Keren Hayesod is belittling the foundation of the Palestine work, he said. Throwing mud at the Zionist Civil Service will cease, he added, when the present vandalism in Zionism is uprooted.

Mr. Leib Jaffe, the Director of the Keren Hayesod, who presided, welcomed Dr. Weizmann as the premier Meshulach. The Keren Hayesod is only beginning, he said. The Jewish masses appreciate the importance of the Fund and contribute their last mite to it, as in Poland, where a million Jews are unemployed but continue to be loyal to the fund of the Jewish renaissance movement. The Keren Hayesod worker is engaged in a tragic mission, he said, labouring under an atmosphere of suspicion, the result of fruitful incitement largely from Palestine. Difficulties notwithstanding, Mr. Jaffe said, the budget would have been covered but for the American crisis, yet the American crisis, he claimed, is as nothing compared with the crisis in Poland, Galicia, and Lithuania, which are, nevertheless, furnishing their quotas.